Sorry, Gran! You’re English!

Charles F. Clark's annual city directory of the inhabitants, business firms, incorporated companies, etc., of the city of Detroit, for 1868-9, p. 256.

So while my mother and grandmother explored the sights in Fort Wayne, I settled in at The Genealogy Center at Allen County Public Library for two days of research. One of my major goals was to verify death dates and locations for my 4th great grandparents Lt. Hugh Massy and his wife Jane Alison Massy. I have a date for Hugh from Burke’s Irish Family Records but I haven’t been able to locate a place of death or burial. As for Jane I have her showing up in Detroit directories up through 1869, nothing in the 1870 Census, likely death record in Middlesex Co, Ontario in 1870, and written testimony from her son, Henry R. (my single most untrustworthy ancestor to date) who said she went back to Canada to visit a daughter and died there sometime around 1863. I spent hours going through cemetery transcriptions—especially around Strathroy and Wisbeach (Lambton Co), where other family members are buried, but still no luck. I did however take the opportunity to go through just about all the materials published by the Lambton Co., Ontario Genealogical Society and a good chunk of Middlesex Co., as well.

I was also able to track some of the families that married into Lt. Massy’s extensive family who were landowners in Co. Limerick, Ireland. A number of Burke’s volumes include information about the Massy’s—two of which I was able to work with at the Library of Michigan in Lansing. But entries in those books referred to other editions that I was able to work with at ACPL. Going through those volumes kept me busy for the afternoon. I photocopied a lot of pages and have a huge number of leads to work with on the matrilineal lines (including a sketchy but intriguing connection to Sir Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queen) through the Travers family.

I also got to tell Gran that while a portion of her family has been present in Ireland for 300 years she’s still in that category of Brit transplant to Ireland. She was not amused. She still has high hopes that the Shea’s will prove to be the stereotypical Celts—Irish Catholic to the core and anti-British. She might win out there but one never knows with her family.

I’ve been working on a research trip wish list. I’ll pencil you in. Actually, I have recently found someone who died at the Battle of Talavera so maybe I’ll add on Spain for myself.🙂 Otherwise, I’m always willing to help.

Sometime I will have to show you this interesting document my mom found.

Backstory: My grandfather was born in the Canary Islands in 1902, and the church that would have recorded his baptism was bombed in the Spanish Civil War. I had tried going through the Spanish govt to see if they had any record of his birth (not for genealogy so much as exploring EU dual citizenship). They said they had no record of him, even after searching adjacent dates and years.

My mom found a document that is essentially a series of affadavits confirming that my grandfather was a) born on the time and place where he claimed to have been born, b) that no official record was available because of what happened to the church, and c) verifying the identities of 2 people from his hometown who were vouching all of the above. Interesting stuff! The document is from the 1960s, so we think that it may have been something that he needed to get out of Cuba.

Cool. Finding a document like that is actually right along the lines of my next two entries… only my subject was not a reliable narrator, or a reliable anything else that I’ve found so far. But his stories make my grandmother laugh!

I like the “Sorry Gran, you’re English” – it reminds me of the time I had to tell my mother, who thought she was ALL Scottish, English and a little bit French that yes, she has some Irish in her. She was sure there was no Irish! (I’ve since found she also has Dutch ancestry.)